• P. Hodgson, C.N. Booth, P.J. Smith
  Sheffield University, Sheffield

The MICE ex­per­i­ment re­quires a beam of low en­er­gy muons to demon­strate muon cool­ing. A tar­get mech­a­nism has been de­vel­oped that in­serts a small ti­ta­ni­um tar­get into the cir­cu­lat­ing ISIS beam dur­ing the last 2ms be­fore ex­trac­tion. The tar­get mech­a­nism has been in op­er­a­tion in the ISIS beam dur­ing 2009 and a large set of use­ful data has been ob­tained de­scrib­ing the tar­get's op­er­a­tional pa­ram­e­ters. This has al­lowed the com­mis­sion­ing of the ini­tial sec­tion of the MICE beam line and in­stru­men­ta­tion, and the close mon­i­tor­ing of tar­get per­for­mance. This work de­scribes these tar­get pa­ram­e­ters and pre­sents some of the re­sults from op­er­a­tional shifts.

• P. Hodgson, C.N. Booth, P.J. Smith
  Sheffield University, Sheffield
• J.S. Tarrant
  STFC/RAL, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon

The MICE ex­per­i­ment uses a beam of low en­er­gy muons to test the fea­si­bil­i­ty of ion­i­sa­tion cool­ing. This beam is de­rived par­a­sit­i­cal­ly from the ISIS ac­cel­er­a­tor at the Ruther­ford Ap­ple­ton Lab­o­ra­to­ry. A tar­get mech­a­nism has been de­vel­oped and de­ployed that rapid­ly in­serts a small ti­ta­ni­um tar­get into the cir­cu­lat­ing pro­ton beam im­me­di­ate­ly prior to ex­trac­tion with­out undue dis­tur­bance of the pri­ma­ry ISIS beam. The first tar­get drive was in­stalled in ISIS dur­ing 2008 and op­er­at­ed suc­cess­ful­ly for over 100,000 puls­es. A sec­ond up­grad­ed de­sign was in­stalled in 2009 and is cur­rent­ly in op­er­a­tion. The tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tion for this up­grad­ed de­sign is given and the mo­ti­va­tion for many of the im­prove­ments is dis­cussed. In ad­di­tion pos­si­ble fu­ture im­prove­ments to the cur­rent de­sign are dis­cussed.